


down to the place we used to lay (when we were kids)

by wayonwayout



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Character Study, Closeted Character, Episode Tag, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Pining, Why Does Riverdale Have So Many Bad Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 12:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10100891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --It's easy with Betty; it's simple, it's safe. Jughead just wants something to makesense. Things with Archie have never been easy, or simple, or safe -- and Jughead, when he's around Archie, has never made (the right kind of) sense.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of a meandering, self-indulgent, introspective nightmare of a fic about secrets, different kinds of intimacy, breaking points, and why sometimes the path of least resistance is the only choice you feel you can make. also, as usual, kids making terrible choices! it's my Brand. 
> 
> many thanks to tumblr user sunnyjughead for being encouraging and AWFUL and yelling with me about "rebel without a cause" <3

“Encyclopedia!”

A blonde head peeked over the lip of the makeshift wall, small fingers clinging.

Jughead grinned. “Sally, what’s the news?”

“Got a case,” and Betty elbowed her way up and over the edge, tumbling to the rough wood floor of the tree house.

He cracked his knuckles, leaning back against the wall like a P.I. in his desk chair, like they did in the movies. (Well, he didn’t really crack them. He pushed on them a little bit but they didn’t crack, not like Dad’s did.) “A big one?”

Betty made a face and rolled her eyes. “No case too small, Encyclopedia -- Juggie, have you even read the books?”

 _That_ was an insult, an offence, a -- a -- a dang outrage, was what it was. Questioning his integrity as a detective. He pushed his right foot forward; glass jingled as it slid across uneven slats. “Quarter in the jar, Kimball,” he said, and she smiled.

Betty Cooper had a good smile. It wasn’t hard at the edges, like his Dad’s, or sad, like his Mom’s, or pitying, like his teachers’. It was like Archie’s: bright as the summer sun on the clean white lines of a baseball diamond, and real as words on a page. When she smiled, he knew she really was happy to be with him.

It made sense that Betty and Archie had the same kind of smile -- they were best friends. And _his_ best friends, too.

Just mostly each other’s.

He pushed all of that out of his head. “What’s the case, Bets?”

He was looking at her smile which is why he caught it -- the way it slipped away, first at one corner and on down the line to the other.

“I, uh,” she said.

Oh. It was one of _those_ days.

“One question, right?” he asked, steepling his fingers under his chin.

She sniffed. “Yeah, okay.”

Encyclopedia Brown always cracked the case with one question. The case today was ‘ _why is Betty in my treehouse?_ ,’ and the answer was the same it always was. It didn’t take a child genius to figure this one out, although Jughead, at ten, would maybe claim to qualify. Definitely if Reggie were in earshot.

He reached over and plucked a blanket out of the cardboard box in the corner, which was old and folding out at the corners, like how a popcorn kernel might look mid-pop. It was autumn, and starting to get chilly. He tossed it at her.

“How long do you need to stay?”

Her mouth wobbled.

“Aw, Bets,” he said, and crawled over, dropping down beside her, tugging the blanket over her knees. “Don’t, come on. Archie’s the one who’s good with crying, you know that.”

She sniffed. “But you’re the one sitting up here by yourself in the cold.”

He turned, cheek pressing to her shoulder -- she’d gotten her growth spurt first, like she always swore she would -- and sighed. “That’s me,” he said.

  
  
  
  


Here’s how it was, as Jughead saw it: girl meets boy. Boy meets other boy. Girl and other boy learn what it means to be two magnets, held across from each other, keeping one shiny nickel upright and steady.

It wasn’t that Jughead thought Archie was better than him. It was just that Archie didn’t know how it really was -- how the world really worked and what made people really tick. He’d never had to learn. And as a keen observer of everything wrong with the world, Jughead saw that -- saw Archie -- and knew he had to be protected from it.

 _Someone_ should be.

Jughead didn’t know what Betty’s thoughts on it were. They didn’t talk, not really -- not about real stuff. Books they read and the unsolved crimes from her dad’s favourite radio plays, sure. But the rest of it, the bad stuff, it had never needed to be said. That was between them, and Archie -- Archie was too, but separate from all that.

When they turned thirteen, and Archie started chasing other girls instead of promising Betty he was gonna marry her, she came to Jughead.

This was complicated for Jughead, because Archie was his best friend, and Betty was his best friend’s best friend, and -- and, because --

“One of these days he’s gonna get up on a parade float and the whole town is just going to go along with it,” he said, to see if Betty would crack a smile. Also because it was true.

“Does that make you Cam?” Betty said, kicking her legs off the end of the slide. They couldn’t be at his place, because the one and only time Betty’s mom had come to pick her up she’d taken one look at the place and decided Betty was going to get tetanus if she spent a second longer there.

 _The house is kid-proofed, Mrs. Cooper,_ Jughead had said, _and being poor isn’t catching._

Mrs. Cooper had dropped her purse in shock, then marched Betty out of there with such a tight grip on her wrist that the skin around it went ghost-white.

They were eleven.

These days Mrs. Cooper texted Betty throughout the day demanding she take a pic of wherever she was and send it back, so she could know where she was all day. It was kind of crazy, but Jughead wasn’t going to throw any stones. What it meant was that Betty couldn’t go over to Jug’s place -- which, whatever, he didn’t particularly want to spend a lot of time there himself -- unless it was too much, in the dead middle of the night, and she could sneak out without her parents knowing.

He kicked against the wood support from where he was sitting on top of the monkey bars. “Ferris Bueller, you’re my hero.”

They were there for a reason. Someone had graffitied _dilton doiley sucks donkey dick_ onto the bottom of the slide and Dilton had cried all day at science camp, and so Jughead and Betty were on the case. But Betty had been wound up tight since they got there, and eventually poking around a sandlot for footprints got boring. Jughead used to have this awesome detective kit with fingerprinting tools, a gift from Archie’s dad, but he’s pretty sure his dad sold it, so there wasn’t really much for them to do. And then Betty had burst out “ _He just makes me so_ mad _sometimes”_ and they were back to where they always wound up, these days.

Betty sighed despondently. “Who’s Sloan, then?”

Round and round and round. Jughead was _tired_ of it. It wasn’t like talking about it, about Archie, _did_ anything! It wouldn’t make him like you back, or remember you were even in the room if a pretty girl walked in, or --

“You’ve got to let this one go, Bets,” he said -- an old refrain.

“And what? Wait and see if it comes back to me?”

“And let it _go_. Come on, Archie? Ol’ carrot top? He’s been a pumpkin for Halloween three years in a row because he can’t make a decision until the 31st and that raggedy piece of shit costume in his closet is all that’s left. That’s really what you want?”

Everything inside him felt all snarled up, all the time, like his mom’s wool when Hot Dog used to get into it, or the threads Jellybean had tied together, over and over, into colourful bracelets, one for her and one for him.

God.

He dropped onto his back, the bars digging in at intervals down his spine, so that Betty wouldn’t see the way his eyes had started stinging.

“You don’t get it, Juggie,” Betty said from under the bars. “You’re not -- you just don’t _get_ it.”

  
  
  
  


One time, when they were eleven, someone stole Archie’s backpack and hid it on him, with his phone and his agenda and his diary -- “yeah, my diary, so what,” Archie had said before either of them could question, rushing the words out without much conviction -- so he brought the case to them. The way Betty’s face lit up when Archie asked them to solve it for him -- Jughead thought to himself, _I’ll never, ever understand that_.

He liked to see her happy, though. She deserved it.

They listened to the story all the way through, and then Betty turned to Jughead and said, “One question, Jug?”

Jughead steepled his fingers seriously -- Archie and Betty both laughed -- and then took a second and thought about it. “You said Jason Blossom was talking to Mr. Flutesnoot. Was he by himself?”

Archie screwed up his face, considering, then said, “Yeah, he was.”

Jughead cut a glance at Betty and she was already looking back at him. “Cheryl Blossom,” they said together.

Jughead shot a fingergun in her direction. “Jason and Cheryl are _always_ together. Odds of him being alone? No way.”

“You think he was in on it?” Betty said, surprised.

“Nah,” said Jughead, and kicked his feet up onto Mr. Andrews’ desk. (He was still at work, so it was fine, it was safe.) “Cheryl saw he had Ol' Flutie distracted and took her chance. You know she likes to mess with the younger kids. It’s probably in her locker -- she uses a key, not a combination, so bring Nancy Drew here to crack it. It’s probably still there, since it would raise questions if she brought it to Daddy Scrooge’s car.”

Archie jumped up, eyes wide. “We should go right now! You’re a genius, Jug.”

Jughead beamed back at him, a strange warmth, like when you sat at just the right distance from a campfire, filling his whole body.

Beside him, Betty said, “Jughead always cracks the case.”

  
  
  


Betty took over the _Blue and Gold_ almost as soon as they arrived at Riverdale High, fourteen years old and eager as anything. She had the Cooper name to ease her way and an investigative fire that was all her own; the _Blue and Gold_ was basically her birthright. It had also gone completely untouched for five years.

She dragged Jughead in as her _premiere field reporter_.

“Can’t I be a private investigator instead?” Jughead complained as she pulled him along by the elbow towards her -- their -- new office.

“ _Jughead_ ,” she said, and he could hear the eyeroll. “What’s the difference?”

“P.I.’s get paid and their names don’t make the papers. Don’t you think I got beat up enough in middle school?”

The office, when they got there, was like an old Victorian house -- dusty, falling to pieces, and probably haunted.

“It’s a _mess_ ,” Jughead said, making a face.

Betty let go of his arm and reached up to tighten her ponytail. “It’s a fixer-upper,” she said, voice rising at the end as she tried to give it a positive spin. Which was, Jughead thought, good practice for her career as a reporter, since news media was dead and what was left was corrupt as hell.

“You do love a fixer-upper,” he said.

“Shut up, Juggie,” she said. “Come on, between the two of us, how long can it take?”

A really, _really_ long time, it turned out.

Archie showed up at almost five, sweaty and gross directly off the field. “My dad’s picking me up, Bets, want a ride?” he said, then, “Oh, hey, Jug! She roped you into this?”

“Look for my name on the front page of next week’s _Blue and Gold_ ,” Jughead said from where he had collapsed into the desk chair. “Not as an author, as a headline and a casualty. Archie, ask Betty why she would _ever_ give me a reason to ask more people who don’t like me questions they don’t want to answer?”

“Archie, tell Jughead that if he would just learn a little _tact_ he could be one of the greats someday.”

Archie laughed. “Tell each other yourselves. Jug, you want a ride?”

Be stuck in a tiny car making small talk with Mr. Andrews while Archie and Betty flirted in the back seat? No thanks.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said, but then Betty cut desperate eyes at him and he corrected himself, “Actually, yeah, that’d be great. I was gonna… do a thing. But I don’t need to.”

“Great!” said Archie, oblivious. Typical.

While Archie texted his dad, Betty scribbled on a piece of paper and threw it at Jughead:

_you CANNOT LEAVE ME WITH HIM he kissed me at moose’s party last week and hasn’t mentioned it. JUGHEAD!!!!_

A cold feeling Jughead couldn’t name bit into his stomach. He looked up at Betty, waving the note and raising his eyebrows inquisitively, and she mouthed ‘ _spin the bottle’_ with a look on her face like she wanted to die.

Right. Okay. Spin the bottle, at a party that Jughead hadn’t been told about. Not that he would have wanted to be. Not that he wanted to play spin the bottle, ever, under any circumstance, and certainly not to kiss one of his best friends.

When they got outside, Mr. Andrews’ old jalopy was idling on the corner, rumbling away. Betty raced over and threw herself into shotgun, leaving Archie to climb into the backseat, throwing Jughead a confused look as he ducked in. Jughead shrugged and got in beside him.

Betty’s secrets were her own to tell.

Jughead kicked at the back of Betty’s chair a few times as Mr. Andrews guided the car into the lane, until she snapped, “ _Juggie!”_ and Mr. Andrews threw him an amused look over his shoulder.

“Hiya, Jug,” he said, and Jughead settled his feet onto the ground sheepishly and said, “Hi, Mr. A,” because even though Fred Andrews would never order someone else’s kid around, something about him just screamed _dad_ to Jughead. He did his best not to think about it.

Betty started telling Mr. Andrews about the newspaper, and Jughead listened in until he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Archie was -- watching him. He looked over and Archie looked down.

The car rumbled on, past their old elementary school. Archie tapped a rapid beat against his thigh, and it made everything inside Jughead feel frantic, like the rush of carbonation rising in a pop bottle. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger -- a nervous gesture that sometimes helped him calm down.

This time it didn’t. He fisted his hands into the loose sleeves of his flannel instead.

“So how was Moose’s party, Arch?” he said, and then, over Betty’s betrayed _Jug!_ from the front seat, “Kind of funny how you didn’t mention it to me when I asked if you were doing anything for the weekend.”

Archie’s eyes went wide, and then he flushed. “I didn’t think you would want to go,” he said. “You hate parties.”

“Maybe I would have liked this one,” Jughead said. It felt like everything inside of him was being churned through one of those old-fashioned meat grinders, coming out the other side in ugly rags. He _couldn’t stop talking_. “Was it a good time, Arch? First high school party, right? Sounds like a milestone to me. Hope you wrote it down in your diary.”

“Fuck you, Jughead,” Archie said, and from the front seat Mr. Andrews said, “Whoa, Archie, language. Come on, guys --”

“So I have a question -- just one. Did you skip the invite because you thought I’d tell everyone how stupid their little party was? Or did you skip it because you thought they’d laugh at you for bringing me along?”

The white of Archie’s JV jersey stood out white against the angry, embarrassed red of his skin.

“Cool,” Jughead bit out, “Awesome. Mr. Andrews, could you pull over? I can walk the rest of the way.”

“Juggie, don’t be stupid,” Betty said, twisted all the way around over the parking break to look between him and Archie. “Stop, come on, it was just one party --”

“Drop it, Betty,” said Jughead, instead of _I noticed you didn’t invite me either_ , or _you would be heartbroken if you were me right now,_ or   _\--_

But this wouldn’t happen to Betty. Betty was pretty, and her family was crazy but respectable, and she knew how to interact with people, and she lived in a nice middle class house and liked a nice middle class boy like she was supposed to.

Jughead, meanwhile --

The car came to a stop. Jughead popped his seatbelt.

“Hey, Jug,” said Mr. Andrews from the front seat, a sad look on his face. “Give me a text when you get home, okay?”

He’d had Mr. Andrews’ number in his phone since he caught Jughead sneaking in the summer before eighth grade, when he was thirteen, which only happened because Jughead was shaking too bad and lost hold of the trellis going up the Andrews’ house to Archie’s window. Their chrysanthemums had never recovered.

“Sure thing, Mr. A,” Jughead said, swinging the door open.

“Jug,” and that was Archie, finally speaking up. It sounded like a plea. But Jughead didn’t look back, swinging the door shut behind him with one hand and hoisting his backpack up with the other.

That hurt anger carried him all the way home, down drab grey streets and monotone box houses into the South side, where the suburbs gave way to houses that were only barely holding it together. _There_ was a metaphor. And then he was in front of his own house, where it was just his dad and him now. And the empty feeling that had gnawed away at his stomach since Betty had thrown that note at him was nothing compared to the abyss of this godforsaken place.

He pulled out his phone, and scrolled to _A_.

 _we cn talk tomorrow,_ he texted. _Im mad but not that mad._

The reply came almost immediately: _jug im sos so sorry it was a douche move i wasnt thnking_

There were a hundred caustic replies at the tips of his fingers but he tucked his phone away instead and stared up at the looming menace of his house.

He’d always have this, at least, to remind him: it was better to have imperfect friends than nothing at all.

  
  
  
  


It got worse.

Suddenly it was like all their edges were catching against each other in the wrong way, like the places they used to make sense to each other had slipped an inch in opposite directions. It wasn’t all the time, but it was a _lot_. Over the stupidest things. It felt to Jug like they weren’t quite the same people anymore -- except, when they fought, they still knew exactly what to say to make it hurt.

Jughead was fighting with his dad, too. He never had before, and then suddenly he just couldn’t stop.

He caught Betty shooting him worried looks. He knew he wasn’t hiding it well -- he hunched his shoulders when he walked, and it felt like he was looking at the world with different eyes. That the world was terrible wasn’t a revelation; what _was_ , was the fact that he wasn’t sure anymore that he was going to be able to outlast it.

He stopped writing for the _Blue and Gold_ in February, and Betty closed its doors in March. It was too much work with just one. He got an after-school job at the local drive-in to start saving money; he told Archie it was for college, but that was an obvious lie, and if Archie was paying any attention to him -- a rare thing these days -- he would have noticed.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t last long enough to save for first and last month’s rent. In May, just after final exams, he found out from one of the younger guys in his dad’s crew that his dad was sending guys out to look for his mom.

He _flipped his shit_.

Three hours later, he was out of the house, his mom’s old camping backpack slung over his shoulder with everything he thought he would need and fresh redness slowly darkening around his left eye.

Archie barely noticed.

The bruise was hard to miss, but Jughead had an excuse for that. The rest of it -- they were supposed to be _best friends_. Jughead would never miss something like this, if it were Archie.

That was true, but maybe not fair. Jughead didn’t give a shit.

Betty was bouncing off the walls, already practically halfway to New York before her bags were even packed. She was so excited to get out of that godforsaken house that Jughead couldn’t even blame her for not noticing something was wrong. And that wasn’t fair either, maybe, but it was _different_. Him and Archie -- it was different. What they had.

So maybe he should have seen it coming. Because Archie got Betty in the divorce.

Well, Jughead was fairly sure that was what happened. He texted her about a week later from the mattress he'd dragged into the Twilight from off the street, on his crappy prepaid phone: _hey it’s jug. finally got a new phone. how’s new york, nancy drew?_

He never got a reply.

He was spending a lot of nights at Pop’s, because it got so quiet at the drive-in on nights off that he started to feel like he was going crazy. He would be going days at a time without speaking to another person if he didn’t make the walk to the little diner. He’d picked up writing for the first time since he was a kid -- stories, instead of exposés -- to try to kill time, fill the silence, but it didn’t really work. The diner had other people, and food that wasn’t just hot dogs he 'borrowed' from his employers or the rice and beans he could afford on his own. It also, on one particular night at the end of July when he was staring at an empty word document thinking about Jason Blossom, had Archie and his dad.

He didn’t look up at first when the bell jingled. He’d discovered that Pop’s was weirdly busy on Wednesday nights, and given up on checking who was at the door each time the little bell went off. This was, apparently, a mistake.

“Jug!” said a voice above him, familiar and genial; he whipped his neck up so fast he saw stars. Mr. Andrews was there, one hand on the other side of the booth, smiling down at him. “Long time no see, kiddo.”

Jughead swallowed, then swallowed again, mouth dry. A glance past Mr. Andrews showed Archie talking to Pop. The stiff line of his back meant he’d seen Jughead and he wasn’t particularly happy about it.

Well, there was a lot of that going around; Jughead wasn’t particularly happy about it either.

“Hi, Mr. Andrews,” he said at last. “Been seeing your signs all around town. How’s life in the fast lane?”

Mr. Andrews laughed. “Slow,” he said. “Mind if I sit?”

“Oh, uh --” there was no way to play this. “Sure.”

Mr. Andrews folded himself into the booth with the kind of stilted ease that construction workers often had. Jughead’s dad had moved like that, before.

Jughead looked over Mr. Andrews shoulder and caught Archie’s eye before Archie looked away.

“The food here is too good,” Mr. Andrews was saying. “I’ve been watching what I eat, and trying to cook more -- you know, for Archie -- but sometimes you just need a good, juicy burger you didn’t make yourself, you know? And you can’t beat Pop’s.”

“Mh,” Jughead hummed, refocusing, and then, “I’ll drink to that,” tilting his glass towards Mr. Andrews.

Mr. Andrews darted a quick look at his drink, then back to him, and rolled his eyes when Jughead snickered.

“Root beer, Mr. A.”

“Five more minutes, dad,” said Archie, arriving on the scene. He paused, then added, “Hi, Jughead.”

“Archie,” Jughead said. “Nice cap, bro.”

Archie flushed, and turned his baseball hat around so the brim faced forward, then took it off entirely.

Mr. Andrews shifted over so that Archie could sit, which he did, with reluctance he wasn’t even trying to hide. “Jughead was just asking after the ol’ brick-laying gig. Archie’s been doing good work with me this summer -- best of my guys, between you and me. Don’t tell him.”

“ _Dad_ ,” Archie huffed, equal parts embarrassed, pleased, and fond.

Jughead’s heart _hurt_.

It was like -- like an old VHS, sticking fingers in to grab at the film, yank it out coil after coil until all the insides were on the outside. That’s how it felt, looking at the Andrews. Like someone had stuck fingers inside him and was unspooling him, inch by agonizing inch.

“What about you, Jug? Still at the drive-in, right? Been meaning to swing by, see what’s on.”

He could barely parse what it was Mr. Andrews was saying to him. It felt like he’d slipped sideways into some world where no part of his life had ever gone wrong and he could still have this. Where this could still mean _home_ , in some quiet, shameful way he’d never been able to admit to them, his dad, or even himself.

His pulse kicked up as the sense of dislocation threatened to overwhelm him -- and then he saw the way Archie was staring at the table, the wall, avoiding his eyes.

The world fell back into place.

“Yeah, still at the Twilight. I’m there so much I might as well move in,” he said, deadpan.

Mr. Andrews grinned at him, then turned and nudged Archie in the side. “What do you say, Arch, want to catch a movie with your old man?”

Archie didn’t look up. “Sure, dad.”

“Pack your bug spray,” Jughead said. He tapped his fingers blankly against his keyboard, eyeing Archie. There was so much inside him -- anger, hurt, and an awful, sad longing, that too-late, mid-jump feeling that maybe he’d made a mistake. Not that he was wrong to be angry or hurt, but that he’d underestimated how much of himself he’d be throwing out with the bathwater.

God, he _missed_ him.

He swallowed and pushed it away, looking out into the blackness out the windows, where the neon shine of Pop’s Shoppe dissipated. The road was a ghostly hint of grey in the dark; the cars that passed down it, only once an hour at this time of night, like souls lost on their way. Riverdale’s loneliness only showed at night, like some veil had withdrawn from over the town, showing it for what it really was.

“Jughead,” Archie said, voice strained.

Jughead snapped back to the present, turning to look at him. Archie’s face was drawn, like just looking at Jughead _hurt_ him.

Jughead didn’t want to know what his own face looked like.

“If you would just --” Archie started, voice tight like a frayed string on the verge of snapping; “I hate that I --”

From the counter, Pop called, “Andrews, to go!”

Archie and Jughead stared at each other for a long moment. Jughead’s eyes were stinging and he couldn’t make them stop. But that wasn’t the same thing as forgiveness.

Archie stood and left the booth.

Mr. Andrews watched him go quietly, then looked at Jughead and sighed.

“Listen, Jughead…”

Jughead wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Save it.”

Mr. Andrews nodded. “I don’t know what happened, so I’m not gonna try telling you what to do. I just want to make sure you know -- you can still call me anytime. Alright?”

Jughead felt his mouth do something awful, and looked away, staring viciously out the window, fighting for control. “Yeah,” he managed.

“You still have my number?”

“Yeah.”

He’d transferred five numbers from his old phone to the burner when his plan ran out -- one source from the school’s administration, two from the mayor’s office, Betty’s number, and Fred Andrews’.

“Good.” Mr. Andrews stood up and stretched, then reached over and set a hand on Jughead’s shoulder. Jughead twitched -- and then leaned into it, before he could stop himself. “Hey Pop?” Mr. Andrews called. “Get Jug a burger on me, okay?”

Then he was gone, reaching an arm to loop around Archie’s shoulders and draw him outside. It was something about that -- their backs turning away from him, like a dead end -- that made him call out, “Archie!”

Archie turned back, and it was like a moment from a movie. Jughead could see how it would unfold: _I miss you_ , he could say, or _I don’t want this to be how we end,_ or even just, _come by the Twilight, I’m serious, I’ll play something good. Cassidy and Sundance, Pinky and the Brain, whatever you want._ Like when they had sleepovers, backs against the foot of the Andrews’ couch, one thick blanket over both their knees. Arms pressed together. Archie dozing off against his shoulder.

What came out instead was: “Have you heard from Betty?”

Because it was easier; because it was safe; because the three of them had always been tangled up, but with Betty, at least, he’d always been able to keep a bit of himself back.

“Yeah, why?” said Archie.

And that hurt too, more and less than he’d been expecting.

“You gotta learn to ask better questions, Arch,” he said, when he could make the words come out normally. “It’s about asking the right one.”

Archie looked at him for another moment, then followed his dad out.

  
  
  


Jughead quit the football game before halftime -- bright lights and crowds weren’t really his scene. He wandered through the suburban quiet of Riverdale’s northside streets, trying to feel out what had changed inside of him. Archie’s face -- the way he had smiled -- kept shoving its way past everything else, imposing itself in his mind’s eye. Each time, a little warmth burst in his stomach, fighting back the instinctive cynicism that told him this couldn’t last.

He found himself at Archie’s doorstep. Vegas barked from inside as he climbed the stairs to the porch; he tapped at the door and said, “hey, boy,” and Vegas calmed down with a little whine.

Putting his back to the door, he slid down to the porch and stared out at the street, the clean lines of the houses. That’s how Archie and his dad found him, more than an hour later.

“Geez, Jug, how long have you been out here?” Archie called, tumbling out of the car. “You’ve gotta be freezing.”

Jugged shrugged and winced, setting down his ragged paperback copy of _In A Lonely Place_. His back was stiff from leaning back against hard wood. He stretched as he stood, shirt rising so the wind could nip at the skin on his hips, making him shiver.

“Hey Jug,” called Mr. Andrews, following Archie out of the car. “Thought I saw that beanie at the game. You want to come in? We’re having nachos to celebrate Archie’s first big varsity game.”

Jughead bit back the less polite response that came automatic. “Not this time, Mr. A,” although nachos sounded fucking _incredible_ right about now. He didn’t want to lock himself into overstaying this uneasy new truce.

Mr. Andrews gave him a smile and a clap on the shoulder as he passed by, making his way inside to the tune of Vegas’ loud welcome. Archie dumped his gear bag on the porch and then collapsed on the first step with a quiet groan.

“I’ve always thought football bore a certain resemblance to mountain goats going at it,” Jughead said, settling down beside him, leaving a little space between them to be safe. “The thunderous crash of skulls and all that. Did you survive?”

“More or less,” Archie said. “Hey. I was really glad you came.”

Jughead shrugged, looking down at the lined wood between his feet. “Seemed like the right thing to do. Not that I’m always the best judge of that, but --”

Archie’s knee nudged against his. When he looked up, startled, Archie was watching him, with that look on his face from the football field, when he asked if they could be friends again, the angles of his face gone all soft. “Hey,” he said. “It was.”

Jughead released a long breath. “I’m not always great at -- people,” he said, and something in his chest loosened. It felt almost like an apology -- not one that he owed, but one that he wanted to give anyway.

It was the truth of the matter, and on this quiet porch, facing into the night, with Archie’s knee pressed to his, he felt like he could say it. He could confess that, on some level, he understood why it was hard to be his friend.

“That’s not,” Archie said, then sighed heavily, rubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “Jug. You’re great, period. I’m just a jerk, with -- with all this stuff in my head, these _feelings_ , that I don’t always understand, and sometimes I do things that --”

“You’ve got a lot going on,” Jughead broke in. He couldn’t listen to it -- not right now. “It’s fine. It’s fine, Arch.”

“It’s not,” Archie said determinedly. “But it will be. I promise, Jug.”

Jughead made a quiet noise in the back of his throat, not quite agreeing or disagreeing. A car passed by and he stared after it. The suburbs had their own sort of uncanny sensibility; the tidy rows of houses with their green green lawns, extending into a forever that couldn’t last. The cars here, pushing against an implacable dark, were their own sort of lost souls.

He shivered.

“Here, dude,” Archie said. “Take my jacket.”

The red leather settled over Jughead’s shoulders heavily, and he laughed.

“What?” said Archie, smiling, that little confused wrinkle tugging at his brow.

Jughead wrapped a hand in the leather, so that the teeth of the zipper bit into his palm. “Do you think the end of the world will come at nighttime?”

That wrinkle deepened, but Archie’s smile didn’t fade. “I dunno. Is that -- is that the right question?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jughead said, and ducked his head, so that whatever feeling was playing across his face was hidden.

  
  
  


When Betty suggested _Rebel Without A Cause_ , he heard it as the apology and admission that it was, and he grinned back crookedly, kicking at her foot under the table. They both knew what story they were in. They always had.

  
  


 

He didn’t go back to Archie’s until after Jason Blossom’s funeral. They went up to his room, and Archie collapsed on his bed. Jughead dropped his nice jacket over Archie’s desk chair and sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, one elbow up on the mattress, looking at the shadows under Archie’s eyes.

He kept trying to untangle the mess of his life, but it just got worse. The pressure of it all weighed on his chest so bad he wanted to grab something sharp and perform amateur aspiration on himself, cut a hole into his pleural cavity and drain everything inside of him so he could breathe easy again. The drive-in. The funeral. Betty. _Archie_.

He didn’t know what the right thing to do was anymore. He didn’t know where he stood. He couldn’t make sense of it -- he just wanted it to make _sense_.

 _He_ just wanted to make sense.

Archie turned over on his side, reached one hand out and tapped his fingers against Jughead’s forearm. His skin had a warm glow in the low light from the lamp on the bedside table, and his eyes were soft and solemn.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

Jughead bit his lip. He looked down at where Archie’s fingertips were still resting against his skin, the curl of his fingers lax. Archie’s thumb twitched under his gaze, then rubbed hesitantly along the line of the bone.

Jughead swallowed. “Do you, uh,” he said, but it came out too quiet, hoarse and stumbling. He cleared his throat. “Do you think I should date? Someone?”

Archie went still.

“Uh,” he said. “I dunno, Jug. You’ve never really wanted to before, right?"

Right.

Right?

“I -- maybe.”

All the words he normally had at the tip of his tongue had pulled a runner on him. His whole body was caught in a kind of heady, embarrassed freezer burn, tingling and awful, and before he could stop himself, he looked down at where Archie’s fingers were curled over the rise of his forearm.

Archie pulled away, rising up so he was sitting, running one hand through his hair. “Jug, I had no idea. Who was, uh -- who was the lucky girl?”

It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. “You know what, nevermind. Forget about it,” Jughead said, getting to his feet. His arms and legs felt like lead. “It was stupid. Nothing like a funeral to put a guy in a romantic state of mind, I guess.”

“Jug --” said Archie.

“Can’t stick around, Archie,” Jughead said, grabbing his jacket off the ground and making for the door. “Things to do, places to break into. I’ve got a dad to investigate.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Not your dad. Don’t worry about it.” He didn’t mean to look back but he did, and Archie -- Archie was sitting bolt upright, a pink flush high in his cheeks and a look on his face that was just -- wrecked.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Arch,” he said, because he couldn’t help it, not when Archie looked like _that_. Even if he didn’t know why.

The silence in the hallway was all too loud, because Archie didn’t call him back.

  
  


What he saw in the troubled youths’ home messed him up. He’d known the kinds of secrets that Betty’s family held, because he’d always seen the way she held herself, the way she played her cards close to her chest and jumped any time an adult raised their voice. They were alike; and in the ride home in the back of the Coopers’ car, he held her hand, which shook just as badly as his did.

It was just another fucked up thing to be shelved in the archive of fucked up things under his ribs, which grew steadily day by day. That’s how his chest felt -- stuffed full, so he had to shove things in with progressively greater force, and they stuck out at odd angles anyway, their hard spines fighting for space. There was too much.

When he broke into Betty’s room, it was for her, to check on her, but it was also for him. That feeling wouldn’t go away and he didn’t know what to do with it, and Archie --

He and Archie hadn’t been alone since the day of the funeral. And seeing Archie, he knew, would just make the feeling worse.

Betty’s room was always as orderly and childish as it was when they were kids, exactly what her family wanted from her. She held herself tightly like she thought all her pieces might fall apart if she didn’t, a frenetic energy making her twitch, and he took her by the shoulders like that might help.

 _Sally,_ he wanted to say, _Nancy, Judy, Sloan, Nora --_

He didn’t know who they were to each other, but that wasn’t her fault. He didn’t know what was going on in his own head.

Her eyes were wet and blue when she looked up at him, and he just -- he saw a way forward that could, maybe, make sense.

He loved her. Of course he did. They’d been tied together since a little boy with a frenzied crop of red hair had dragged him by the wrist across the sandlot and said “ _Betty, this is Juggie, and he’s gonna be our best friend too now.”_ More than that -- they _got_ each other, in a way that Archie had never been able to -- they saw the world through similar eyes.

And when he stuttered, why couldn’t it be from the kind of nerves all boys feel around girls? Why couldn’t that be what this snarled mess in his stomach meant? Why couldn’t he feel something simple, for once?

He put his hands on either side of her face, and he kissed her.

(It didn’t feel like anything, but maybe, if he tried hard enough, it could.)

  
  
  


The look on Archie’s face when he saw them holding hands for the first time was like he’d been hit by a linebacker.

Betty flushed red, and Jughead squeezed her fingers and lifted his chin against the impulse to curl up into a ball, burrow into his own body where he couldn’t be seen.

Besides, Archie had Val’s legs swung over his lap, so what right did he have to look like that? Like Jughead and Betty were tearing something out of him -- something he’d never even known was there?

“This is, uh,” Archie said. “New?”

“And surprising!” said Veronica, because rich kids never really had to learn tact. Jughead had been starting to find it kind of endearing, but not so much now.

Betty cleared her throat, and swung Jughead’s hand in the air between them. “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But also, weirdly, not. Juggie and I…”

She trailed off, and he shot her a small smile. He knew what she meant, even if no one else did.

“She’s the only other person in this school with good taste in detective novels,” he said, and she smiled back.

“Jug,” Archie said, “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure,” he said, through a feeling of impending doom trickling down his spine. He dropped a quick kiss on Betty’s cheek -- it was easy, it was getting easier -- and followed Archie out of the student lounge, into the hallway. It was completely empty, and the long stretch of lockers made the space feel larger, and the distance between him and Archie seem smaller.

“What’s up?” he said.

Archie stared at him for a long second, the skin of his cheek shifting like he was chewing at the inside of it. Then he said: “Is this really what you want?”

“Okay,” Jughead said, setting his shoulders for a fight. “That feels like a pretty presumptive question, bud.”

“Sorry,” Archie said immediately. “Sorry, I just -- Jughead. I don’t understand this. What are you doing?”

“That’s what I’ve asked myself for years as you chased after every girl that wandered into your eyeline,” Jughead said. “We live in a pretty small town -- I was starting to wonder how you hadn’t run out already.”

“Jug, I’m _serious_.”

“So am I. It is _seriously_ none of your business.”

“This isn’t you!”

Everything inside of Jughead cracked open all at once, the compound effect of a hundred faultlines built up over time -- like a great crack in the polar ice, splitting down one massive seam after years of fissuring, the sound ringing out for miles as shards plummet into the sea. 

“Who am I, then, Arch?” he demanded, his voice an awful, ragged thing. “Who the fuck is it that you think I am?”

“Jughead,” Archie said, reaching out for his arm. He flinched away. “Jug, please.”

Jughead shook his head. “Don’t.”

“When we were fighting, when we weren’t speaking to each other… Jug. It felt like my heart was breaking. That’s what it felt like.”

He met Archie’s gaze, and Archie’s eyes were wet and scared.

Betty appeared in the doorway. “Juggie,” she said, “what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Jughead wiped at his eyes. “I can’t,” he managed, through the shaking in his chest, “I can’t do this.”

He turned and took the stretch of the hallway at a run. They called for him to come back, but he couldn’t. All the ugly things inside of him were pounding at the walls, shouting to be heard; angry ghosts threatening to break through. It was too much for him, and he and Betty -- they’d always had one unspoken principle.

Whatever happens, whatever bad thing happens -- don’t let it get on Archie.

  
  
  


When the hard floor of the house he was squatting in and the way his thoughts bounced off the white white walls became too much, Jughead packed up and left.  He hadn’t been able to breathe right since he’d left the student lounge; he would start to feel fine, and then he’d remember, and his chest would start to shake again. His thoughts ran in circles --  _I'm doing it all wrong. I've screwed everything up --_ and the bare walls made the place feel too much like the Cooper's institution.  _Paging Nurse Ratched:_  he needed to be put out of his fucking misery. 

Instead, he packed up, and made the familiar trek down the silent streets of Riverdale suburbia. There wasn't a car in sight, so he stepped off the pavement and followed the dashed white line down the dead middle of the road; the streetlights brought every crack in the tarmac into sharp relief, while the sidewalks and the houses beyond faded into obscurity. A long blur on either side of him -- his mind filled the details in, summoning the spectres of his high school hallways; the blank wards of Polly's institution; the lonely stretch of road outside Pop's. He was buried deep inside of his own head and suspended five feet outside of it.  

Then he looked up, and he was at a crossroads: Archie's house on his right, and Betty's on his left. 

The literary symbolism in his life had gotten a little too pointed, lately. Anytime Robert Frost would like to _mind his own business_ , he thought with mild hysteria, would be just fine by him. 

He dropped his backpack carelessly to the ground, and looked to his left and to his right, considering the two roads in the wood.  

The lights in Archie’s house twinkled gently. He could see movement through the big first floor windows that looked in on the living room -- Mr. Andrews, maybe, or both of them. Watching a ball game or eating dinner or just talking. They had always seemed like a perfect family to him -- a perfect home. The All-American dream, and he’d never understood how it was that he could fit into it.

Even now, after all the misfortune that had hit the Andrews family in the past few months, he still couldn’t picture it and believe it. Knocking on the door and being welcomed in; folding himself into the couch, in the spot that always sunk a little and made him feel enclosed in the best way. Archie sitting beside him, shoving a dinner tray into his hands, and Mr. Andrews smiling down at him, saying, “ _you know our home is always yours, son_.”

He could picture it, but he couldn’t believe it. That fantasy captured them perfectly, but it imagined a _him_ that could belong in a place like that, that could soften his edges enough to fold into it, instead of tracking his dirt and wreckage and ugly confusion all over the place.

Not even _he_ could sell _that_ story.

He tugged the ladder leaning against the Coopers’ wall, a leftover from when they repainted its gleaming face, into position, and climbed it carefully, ascending from the dark of the lawn into the warm glow emanating from Betty’s window. She was seated at her desk; when he knocked against the glass, she looked up like she'd been expecting it.

They got the window up together, and then she just stared at him, searching his face. He didn’t know what he was showing her. He had no energy left to psychoanalyze himself; what he really, really wanted to do, was sleep.

“One question,” he said.

She nodded slowly.

There were a hundred she could ask. _What are we doing?_ Or _Why here and not Archie’s?_ Or even _Why are you lying to yourself, Juggie, why do you demand the truth from everyone else but lie yourself blue in the face for no good goddamn reason, like you think the rest of us can’t tell?_

She reached out and took hold of the ladder, steadying it -- and him. When she tilted her head, the curve of her mouth was sad. It was a smile, but Betty always smiled. The trick was to look at what else was hiding under it.

“How long do you need to stay?” she asked.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the names betty and jug call each other are: encyclopedia brown and sally kimball (from the encyclopedia brown mystery series); cameron frye and sloan peterson (from "ferris bueller's day off"); nancy drew (from nancy drew; to jug's bess or george, depending on how useful he was being at the time); judy (from "rebel without a cause"; to jug's plato crawford); nora charles (from "the thin man"; to jug's nick charles).


End file.
